Hayley Youngs

My current work, Orchid Fever, explores orchids as immersive, dreamlike portals shaped by color, movement, and abstraction. Rather than depicting flowers as they appear, I transform their forms into psychedelic, emotionally charged environments that invite reflection and escape. I have been working as an artist in Greenpoint since 2005, developing an intuitive, process-driven practice rooted in natural forms, symmetry, and vivid color. In this series, orchids become strange, otherworldly presences through which I explore themes of beauty, fragility, and resilience. My work has been included in exhibitions at Hollis Taggart Gallery, Wassaic Project, Future Fair, Spring Break Art Fair, 5-50 Gallery, Deanna Evans Project, and IRL Gallery, among others. I recently completed a residency at L’AiR Arts in Paris.

My work centers on painting and drawing that merge inner psychological states with natural forms, using vivid, psychedelic color, symmetry, and fluid structures to create immersive, emotionally charged environments. Influenced by surrealism, psychedelia, and visionary traditions, my practice is intuitive and process-driven, prioritizing sensation and perception over representation. I am currently expanding Orchid Fever, an ongoing body of work in which orchids function as both subject and portal; I am drawn to orchids because they feel like beings from another realm, strange, divine, and alive with an uncanny presence. Rather than botanical depictions, their forms are transformed and abstracted into mystical, otherworldly spaces that address themes of beauty, fragility, desire, resilience, and spiritual awakening. Through a balance of harmony and distortion, repetition and excess, color operates emotionally and energetically to shape atmosphere and perception. Ultimately, my work aims to serve as a visual refuge, offering moments of beauty, escape, and quiet reflection in an overstimulated world.